F.D.P - Random abbreviation!

Hello, LightRedemption here. The ultimate aim of this blog would be to gather up people and teach them about the things that would benefit them in DotA/Dota 2 in the long run while hoping to educate the general community in a positive way.

F.D.P - Random abbreviation!

Erm, seeing how my last blog post has reached 1000 views, I decide to write another one. I know it holds little relevance, but it is a good deal of motivation.

Yes, F.D.P, a random abbreviation extremely made up by me some 2 minutes ago now stands for Farm Distribution Priority. Now this might sound like a big word, but it's not. Actually it kind of is, still, that is not my point. I'm posting this to explain to the people who are not familiar with the term. Actually I don't think anybody's familiar with the term since I just made it up.

1. So WTF is F.D.P already!

Anyway, F.D.P is what I already told you. Now, sometimes on the forums you see me, or some random posters, refer to a hero's position in their team with "#" + number from 1 to 5. Now what might this be? Well that is the signs of F.D.P my friend. The number stands for the priority slot of farming in a team. When you're playing as #1, you are allowed the most access to creeps and the likes. Conversely, #5 means you shouldn't take creeps at all and should try to get by with minimal farm. This usually doesn't apply to towers and roshan last hit though, but it does apply to Aegis and Cheese priority.

So, this usually only applies to competitive gaming and/or clan wars, because usually you wouldn't get to distribute those kind of farm without trust, team work and good communication, which is all but possible in a pub game.

2. What is the importance of F.D.P and how do I use it?

Well, it is but a number. LOL no jk, it is much more than that. By distributing farm properly, your items would get to their designated target soon and efficiently. It is highly recommended because you would not have farm wars between heroes during the games if such a priority has been determined from the start. It is essential to a team's success if you're not just aiming to push the shit out of everything. The great about this method is, that it allows you to be independent of specific heroes but rather the position in the team of which you are most comfortable with, especially considering how hero roles are all just blurs tbh

Applying the F.D.P method is easy, and many teams have done so already (they don't call it F.D.P though). You need to distribute your role on the team beforehand and stick to the plan for it to work properly. There has been several times when a team simply cannot fit into the #1-2-3-4-5 model and fail miserably. A good example would be the old star-studded DK. They have too many #1s and #2s, can't even get their teams together and stumbled on their own feet even before most games started. We all know the end of that.

Now, I would take an example team that currently has the F.D.P method applied to teambuilding and role distribution. That team is, you guessed it, the new DK, one of the most successful DotA teams in all of China right now. Here is their roster

Now, that is a winning formula, they fit almost perfectly into the F.D.P model, while every single one of their players stays competent and well aware of their roles. I usually use their model when commenting using #1(2,3,4,5).

Simple, no? Most of the time, it is usually recommended that you have a specific player for each # so that you wouldn't have to worry about changing it prior to every match, unless you're planning some kind of twisted catch-all strategy that I obviously wouldn't be able to cover in this piece. The thing to notice though, that the 2 consecutives # players in a team can swap if needs be (meaning a #4 can swap with a #5). In fact #4 and #5 are frequently swapped because they hold little difference. The times when those two are not interchangeable is when #4 needs a Blink Dagger, otherwise it's pretty flexible.

To make an example, let's say you have a team consists of these heroes

A good distribution would be this

#1
#2
#3
#4
#5

As you can see, both the #4 and #5 aren't aiming for any particularly important items at the early stages, rather leaving those to WR most likely. Thus those two are interchangeable. #1 is obviously DK, and WR would be going for things at #2. Out of the 3 left it is obvious that Clock would do best with the excess gold, so he is at #3. Now we have a solid team and good distribution in priorities of farm (1 to 5) and expendables (5 to 1). This is a matter of team organization, and should be dealt as such. Since many heroes can fit many priority slots, yet a single can go for a lot of priority slots as well, that's why it is always better to distribute # to the player themselves rather their hero pool.

I hope you understand the F.D.P method now (spread the abbreviation!) and hopefully be able to apply in effectively to your newly built teams and ready yourselves for competitive DotA. If you have any comments and/or suggestions please feel free to put so below. I am LightRedemption, and this has been another good day blogging.

Nebu1a and Luminous on dotacommentaries.com use them a lot as well.
I find them useful, especially in conjunction with a pretty simple role distribution:

The number 1 is the only place a real carry can be put at, because this role needs an excessive amount of farm and levels. With this farm, he can basically fulfil any role in the late-game to some extent. However, a semi-carry can also be put at number 1 if there is no carry in the team.

Semi-carries can fulfil any role from number 1 to 3, although they usually tend to fill number 2 and 3. Which one of these numbers they play depends on whether they can be put in a hard lane or rather the more safe solo mid position. These semi-carries need primarily levels and mostly also a decent amount of farm to be effective in the mid-game. They can fulfil multiple sub-roles, such as assassins (Tiny), tank (Doom), glass cannon (Shadow Fiend), pusher (Shadow Shaman) or just overall utility (Windrunner)

Number 4 and 5 are the two supports. They require the least farm and exp and prove to be powerful heroes at the earliest levels. The soft support is often a teamfight initiator who makes use Blink Dagger (Tidehunter), or a jungler (Chen). The hard support (CM) does completely fine without this farm.

If you are interested in my other writings, most likely fictional, you can take a look here for reference. Those are far from my best or most original, but it does give a clear image of what I do in my free time.

Yuri Thread

If you are interested, please take a look at the Yuri thread located here. Would very appreciate if you do.